My Fair Aussie

by Jennifer Griffith

  Change the subject, change the subject. Oh, but I wanted to give in to the emotions that were tugging me into his arms, pulling my mouth to taste his at last. It took more than all my willpower to pull away, so I stayed put, suspended in his gaze, dissolving in his arms.

  Outside in the courtyard between my bungalow and the mansion, a clatter ensued, followed by a sharp bark, and then some muted, slurred cursing.

  The spell binding me in his stare snapped, and I freed myself.

  “Mo-No.” I shuddered, pulling back into myself, straightening my t-shirt and blinking away the soft-focus camera vision that had clouded my judgment.

  No way could I let this progress into the kissing I’d ached for just seconds ago, not when I had Sylvie’s future at stake.

  “Henry? Are you home?” Mo-No stage-whispered, and I heard a soft knocking on the guest cottage door. “Please say you haven’t gone to bed yet. Not without my goodnight kiss.”

  So he hadn’t kissed her!

  Why did relief pour through me like melted chocolate?

  “Your lights are off, Henry, but I know you’re home. You don’t have anywhere else to go. Why act so into me, and then disappear, just when the gin is really flowing?”

  Gin? I never would have pegged Mo-No for a gin girl.

  “I’d better go,” Henry whispered, letting me extract myself from his arms.

  “You can’t leave now. She’ll see you coming out of my place and this whole circus will be blown.”

  “You haven’t got a back door? The guest cottage has a back door.”

  I did. And he left through mine and went in through his. While I shouldn’t have been an eavesdropping nuisance, I’ll admit I did lean a little closer to my bungalow’s wall to try and overhear how Henry handled a late night caller like Monique-Noelle. Hey, at least I didn’t slide open the window above my bed’s headboard to get a full volume earful. I did have some class.

  Oh, hey. I’m just gone to bed. He affected a sleepy voice. And you’re in no shape for a kiss. If I give a girl a kiss, I expect her to remember it the next day.

  Nice line. And then I heard the door click shut, and Mo-No’s flouncing stomp across the courtyard, Chachi yapping all the way.

  If Henry Lyon had kissed me, I would have remembered it long past tomorrow.

  Guaranteed.

  ACT II: Scene 12

  I’m [Not Quite] an Ordinary Man

  SAN NOUVEAU, CHANNEL ISLANDS, STILL. YEP. WE’RE STILL HERE

  Wherein some things progress—good things—between our hero and our heroine as our heroine cleans the pool.

  Monique-Noelle had never once been an early riser, in all my months working for her. Today was no different, possibly thanks to the gin at the yachting club.

  I was outside taking Chachi for her morning constitutional, and then I had plans—big plans—to clean out the pool, since Lars, our pool guy with the Master of Fine Arts degree in Creative Writing from Breadloaf, had the week off for Christmas.

  Christmas. I was missing my family all of a sudden. If I could afford to take the time off, I’d go see them. But until I got a real research project approved, I had to keep working to put the money toward tuition. Plus, I didn’t want to hear them ask any more questions about my progress on my Ph.D., or lack thereof.

  My parents would like to know that I’d been approved for a dissertation topic, but would never understand my reasoning to change it anyway.

  “Woof.” Chachi gave a subdued bark, not her usual style, and I looked up. There stood the shining, gorgeous frame of the man from the cottage next door.

  “Henry. Good morning.” It had been too long since I’d seen him. Almost six hours—six hours that stretched like a golden thread, connecting the times between meeting his eyes, feeling his nearness, basking in his attention.

  Yeah, I was pretty much a goner.

  “Good morning. How you going?”

  “Probably on foot.”

  “Oh, I guess you all say ‘how you doing’ here instead.”

  Right. As opposed to in Australia. Where he was from.

  “Still—how you going, Elizer?” He came and stood by me. His hair was still shining wet from a bath.

  “Going fine, thanks. You?”

  “I like morning. Morning is the best at the station, the way the sun rises in the purple east.”

  Uh-oh. Station talk again. I’d better take a cue from Henry and change the subject.

  “From what I hear, you seem to be winning hearts right and left all over the island, what with your yachting skills, in addition to everything else.”

  He let that bit of praise roll off him and instead asked, “Would you say we’ve hit the ‘mission accomplished’ destination yet?”

  “If not, we’re circling the airport before coming in for a landing.” We’d made our target location in record time, too. One week, rather than the originally agreed upon two. “I’d definitely say you’ve earned your one phone call, prisoner.”

  “Is that how it works? You have to earn the phone call when you’re apprehended? I thought you automatically got one, at least to your lawyer.”

  “You’d know more than I would.” Weren’t vagrants arrested for…vagrancy? Maybe exceptionally good-looking vagrants got let off for good-looking behavior.

  “Me? I’ve never been taken to an American jail. There was that one time, when I was a kid, and we toured the lockup at the base of the Alps. Probably to scare us into good behavior.”

  “So, did it work?” I tapped the bugs out of my pool cleaning net onto the grass. “Are you good?”

  “I can be good.” He gave me a flirtatious eyebrow. “Very good.”

  “Henry. Monique-Noelle will hear.”

  “She’s sleeping off her gin.” He stepped closer to me. “We could spend the whole morning together. I never did anything about that Jacuzzi offer your boss made me, but it sounds awfully nice.”

  It did. And seeing Henry in swim trunks might be nice as well.

  “We never finished our discussion about past relationships, Henry.” With my net-on-a-pole, I rescued a honeybee swimming for its dear life in the chlorinated deep and tapped it onto the lawn. “To be honest, I don’t even know whether you’re a married man.”

  “Me. Married.”

  “See, a non-answer.”

  “No, it’s just that you have to know by now, I’ve only got eyes for you, Elizer.”

  For me! Those gray eyes were mine?

  “Still, are you? Married?” I needed a pinpointed, exact answer. No fudging. “Because your eyes ought to be for your wife, if so.”

  “Elizer. I’m not married.” His voice was low and serious for once. “I’ve tried dating girls, but like you, I found them all materialistic and not willing to enjoy being outdoors.” He shook his head. “I spend a lot of my time outdoors. It’s what I do.”

  That was probably true. I was glad he had California for that, as its weather tended to be temperate most of the time. Maybe, though, if he wanted to, he could come and see my parents’ ranch, the Circle G, and see if he liked it there. The stability of daily life, of being with the horses and the sky and the lack of traffic and stress might go a long way toward healing the delusions. I might get to know the real Henry there. At the ranch, we might find possibilities, the two of us.

  I didn’t care how crazy I was sounding now. Something amazing lurked beneath the surface when it came to Henry Lyon. I needed to uncover it, and then claim it for my own.

  “So you didn’t date any of them.”

  “Sure, for a few weeks or so, but never seriously. They all just seemed enchanted by the helicopter and the plane and the view from Cherrington Downs. That’s the name of the station.”

  Oh! His station had a name. I made a mental scribble of it. I’d look it up later. Maybe I’d be able to find people who knew and missed him.

  “It has a view?” I didn’t want to mention the helicopter. He seemed hung up on those.

  “A spectacular one.” He
took the net from my hand and leaned it against a poolside chair. “I’d love for you to see it someday, Elizer. If you wouldn’t mind the flight.”

  “Planes don’t scare me. Just cliffs and violent, breaking waves.”

  “Good.” He ran his hands up and down my arms. I ached to melt into them, but just then I noticed that Mo-No’s balcony door was ajar. She could probably hear us, if she was awake.

  “Do you have plans with Monique-Noelle today?” Just the mention of her name shattered the mood. It was a low blow, but under the circumstances, I didn’t have any choice. Henry had to keep his distance from me until we officially landed at our mission accomplished destination.

  “Oh. Right. I agreed to go on that fox hunt today.”

  Ugh, that awful fox hunt. The mention of it shot holes through me. I’d forgotten it was today, and now the whole aspect of the morning’s sparkling beauty clouded up. Henry seemed perfect in so many ways, but this lack of concern about killing a little fox cast a long shadow.

  “That will be nice.” My words came out flattened.

  “Actually, it might not be too bad.”

  “And why’s that?” I needed him to tell me exactly why he was okay with targeting a helpless animal and ensuring its demise. “Because you like hunting?”

  “Hunting’s all right, but what I meant was Monique-Noelle isn’t going. She claims she can’t ride a horse, and she can’t be around them because she’s allergic, and, maybe I should have led with this, she hates them.”

  Hates horses!

  “You’re not serious.” What a waste of emotional energy. This fact sidetracked me from my other concern, but seriously. “Who in their right mind hates horses?”

  Henry’s head gave a side-to-side equivalent of a shrug.

  “I guess the ironic moment came when she hinted that she’s always secretly yearned for a fox fur coat.” He winced. I was getting mixed signals. Was he for or against the hunt? Now I couldn’t tell. “She wants me to win it and prove my worthiness to her. Before she went off into slosherville last night riding a tidal wave of alcohol, she told me she was ready to leap.”

  “Leap.”

  “With me. To take off from her husband and go wherever I took her.”

  “Oh.”

  “So we really are done circling the airport, and now we’re coming in for a landing.” Why hadn’t he said so?

  “That’s great.” It came out grite. See? The accent was contagious. “Your phone ought to be here anytime. You can make those calls, get out of here.”

  He’d done his stint in the clink with me, was demanding his reward for time served, and would be dropping off the face of my planet.

  Forgive me for not being able to muster more enthusiasm for his success. Somehow it left me feeling gypped. Didn’t I deserve more time with him? The full two weeks? A lot could happen in two weeks. Heck, in one week he’d already progressed to inviting me to see the views at his station. We were fast-tracking.

  And now the tracks just ended. No more iron rails, just dirt, and a sad drop-off to nothing.

  “So the fox hunt organizers think she’ll swipe the pelt for her own use, huh?” If my words had been flattened before, now they’d been through a wringer. I couldn’t help it if Henry was looking at me askance. “So you skip it,” I shrugged. “This is about Mo-No, anyway, not the fox. Hang out with her and put the final seal on the deal. Kiss her so she remembers. And then I’ll give her the bad news—after you’ve left, if you like. Or you could leave a note.”

  After he left, I’d be remembering nothing but his near-kiss. I wouldn’t even have the reality of that to fall back on. Nothing but air and anticipation and disappointed hopes.

  I could see the logline describing the next six months of my life: me, left in San Nouveau, at a blubbering Mo-No’s mercy, aching to become Queen of the Bus Station.

  I’d be living a version of life worthy to be the sequel to Frogs in the Sand.

  Then what would my parents say about my life choices?

  “It won’t work that way. Here’s the problem. Monique might not be willing to go along on horseback, but she insists—and you know she can insist—that I do the fox hunt anyway.”

  I did know how she could insist. I’d been the target of her insistence too many times.

  “That’s weird. Why would she care whether you go?”

  “She’s got some harebrained notion I’ve got political potential here on this island. If I ride in this fox hunt, she’s certain I’ll solidify my chances at being King of San Nouveau or something. I can’t back out, she says.”

  I frowned. If killing an innocent fox is how a person became leader of this place, Polly was more right than ever. I needed to quit this job, if only to get away from the freakishly warped senses of right and wrong that prevailed among the super-rich.

  “So you’re going to do it anyway.”

  “Yeah, but I need a partner.” Didn’t we all, in a larger sense? “Do you ride, Elizer? I mean, are you willing to ride other horses besides Black Jack? Or would you feel disloyal to him?”

  “You remember Black Jack by name?” I—how could he keep my horse’s name in his mind? Of course, I remembered that he claimed he had a horse named Gypsy.

  Then again, he’d made quite a few claims of ownership.

  “I remember pretty much every word you’ve ever said to me, Elizer.” His voice was low, lower than I’d heard it, as if this was some kind of confession.

  My insides turned to a quivering jell-o on my mother’s holiday table, and I realized, I had hundred percent lost the little wager I’d made with myself about not starting to fall for this guy. My heart went sailing uncontrollably after any guy who remembered the name of my horse, especially one who had a cowboy walk, a great smile, and an unreal accent that turned everything inside me to chocolate frosting.

  “Back to the topic at hand. Would you ride with me? In the fox hunt?”

  The words fox hunt turned the chocolate frosting inside me into a congealed mass of…something else, shoving me away from the idea with repellent force.

  “I’m pretty sure Monique-Noelle wouldn’t love that idea.” I’d heard her hands off and eyes off threat. Not only that, but I’d seen how possessive she was against the women at the golf course the other day. She’d even given me a stink-eye or two when she’d caught me saying hello to Henry near the guest cottages. “We’re really close to the finish line with her now, like you said. Maybe we shouldn’t jeopardize that.”

  “I made a deal with her. I’d ride if she’d let me pick my riding partner.”

  “Pretty sure she didn’t think you meant me.”

  “Pretty sure you’re right.”

  Why was he picking me? I fished out a still-swimming beetle from the water and set him free on the grass to dry out.

  “Say you’ll do it.”

  “Chase a fox. On horseback. With dogs.”

  “You’re a natural at things like that. I’ve seen how you handle animals, and I know you miss your horse. Have you even had a chance to ride since you’ve been on this island? Seeing it from horseback has to be a different way to experience it, one you don’t want to miss.” He jutted his chin out at the world around us. “If nothing else, it’s a chance to get back on and feel the wind in your hair. I’m not in it to win it, even if it might help put the final nail in the coffin with Monique-Noelle. Come on, you owe me.”

  His eye sported a twinkle. One I couldn’t resist, blast him, even when it put me in a morally dubious situation.

  Frankly, I did owe him. He’d given me a full week of his life, and I’d given him a hollow promise of a phone—one I hadn’t come through on yet. Besides, it was true: the only time I’d been around horses since, basically, I’d been at college was when I took Sylvie for her weekly lesson on the miniature Shetland, which sometimes made her cry. I never rode, just watched all the toddlers in their bicycle helmets get walked around a dirt ring, crying for their mommies. Or their nannies.

  The
n, a bigger idea dawned on me. If I was on this ride, I could possibly make a difference. I might be able to not corner the fox, but to save it instead, help it get away from the hounds and go free.

  “Fine. I’ll be glad to.”

  Henry leaped over to me, and taking my upper arm, kissed me hard on the cheek. “You’re absolutely legend, Elizer.”

  Legend. That sounded like a compliment.

  I didn’t know if he’d still call me legend when I threw a spanner in the works at the San Nouveau fox hunt on Friday, the day before Christmas Eve, spoiling everyone’s holiday idea of fun.

  ACT II: Scene 13

  I Could Have Danced [Fox Hunted] All Night

  SAN NOUVEAU ISLAND, CALIFORNIA CHANNEL ISLANDS

  Wherein our heroine finally gets wise. Sort of. It’s about time, after all.

  It took every single ounce of my willpower to keep ironing Mo-No’s riding outfit at the ironing board within earshot of the woman.

  Enduring a full-on description of Monique-Noelle’s parasailing adventure with Henry, how she nearly lost her swimsuit when she flew up in the air in the harness attached to the parachute being pulled by the speed boat, was almost more than a girl should have to be subjected to—especially when I was completely ga-ga over the same guy myself.

  “I thought it was so romantic up there, above the waves, seeing everything, that he’d take his moment, but he’s so stodgy. No kiss even with that view.” She wasn’t talking to me, of course. Happily, I was not her confidante for this feast of unappetizing details. However, I had to be on standby while she painted Chachi’s toes and Dreena painted her dog’s toenails—with hearts and flowers.

  Bless him, bless him for not kissing her on the parasailing trip, during the yachting club ball, or any other time. I did not want to share lips with someone who’d kissed Mo-No.

  Wait, was I expecting Henry to offer me a kiss sometime?

  I was. I totally was. He’d dangled it tantalizingly in front of me for nearly half an hour last night, and I hadn’t taken it—for a lot of reasons, none of which seemed valid in the light of day.